Friday 23rd January ’09

.. a begining of the ending of work on this seven string guitar..

the backplate is, unusually for my work, plastic..

it is cut out, shaped and installed..

we move to the office (or what’s left of it since my daughter came on the scene!!) .. and the control cavity is lined with copper foil..

the basic wiring is performed.. volume and a three way toggle.. coupled with a matched set of handwound custom humbuckers from Wizards workshop of delight!!  does something tell you I’m blown away by the sounds that come out of this beast!!!??? .. well, I am!!!

she is set up, which is difficult in this case due to the tuning.. originally she was designed as a fairly standard drop tuned seven string.. she ends up tuned low C G D A E G A .. basically NST tuning with an added high a.. the tension of which sucks and also necesitates a bit of fiddling with the saddles.. succesful fiddling of course (smug grin..)

and some fun is had with those amazing sounds!!!

I then spent half the night cutting out pics of the guitar and putting together her page in the gallery..

we come back to Andy’s bespoke eight string guitar.. the finish is not quite right..

so I carefully remove the bulk of it with a random orbital sander and various grades of wet and dry..

and here she is with another coat of lemon oil.. now ready for waxing etc etc..

I feel the need to make significant progress on Dave’s custo left handed guitar, the headstock veneer has cured and the excess wood is removed

and the tuner holes and washer recesses are drilled.. the headstock is curved like a drop top.. should end up bein pretty damn cool!

the control cavity cover recess is routed out

and it’s on to the carving process.. a rough idea of what I’m after is drawn onto the guitar

and after a while the top is starting to look pretty good..

the neck and back, including an all access neck joint is carved and rough sanded.. note the calipers on the guitar. used extensively during the carving of the neck..

an end to a rather satisfying, if dusty,  day..

morning.. and the edges of the body carving are rasped to a comfortable curve..

? this bastard scared the dogs flying too low!

the cutaways are sanded through the grits by hand before moving on to any other sanding..

and then, growing bored with sandpaper, I move on to the backplate, the template is used to mark the shape out onto a piece of figured maple matching the top..

and it is then machined out on the bandsaw..

finally the sanding process begins with the random orbital and 120 grit paper..

once the carving marks have all been erased i can move up through the grits, but only after a few more little jobs.. jack socket..

and screw holes..

and a fairly big job.. the inlays are cut out of a piece of ebony..

and then the cavities are cut out with a mini router..

after a few more hours sanding the base plate finally fails and disks keep flying off.. so it is replaced with the spare I so inteligently bought a few months back!!

the workshop is under a thin sheen of dust and the guitar is finally ready..

for this!!  I really do like blue guitars!!

and the way this mahogany’s grain comes up under a coat of lemon oil is particularly stunning!  topography anyone?

anyway, the backplate works quite well..

and after a coat of oil the final result is particularly pleasing.. as ever there’ll be quite a few coats of wax to go before she’s ready for wiring etc..

Have an amazing weekend!

Ben

Crimson Bespoke guitars UK